1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for controlling lighting and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for controlling lighting using the luminance of a lit space measured by a light sensor in a digital addressable lighting interface (DALI)-based lighting network environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
To cope with growing power demand, current lighting apparatuses have developed into lighting control systems that are capable of automatically and appropriately controlling the luminance of a lit space depending on surrounding luminance in order to prevent the use of unnecessary lighting, to a degree that is beyond the simple control of lighting using on/off switches. A representative lighting control protocol and system is a DALI standard. The DALI standard can meet the needs of a lighting user by assigning addresses to each light and each control device or assigning an address to a group of lights and a control device.
For example, Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2012-0095153 entitled “Light Control Device and Method Based on DALI Communication” discloses a technology that is capable of locally or remotely controlling one or more DALI masters using a server.
As described above, according to the DALI standard, multiple DALI control devices can be installed, the concept of an input device is introduced, and lighting can be controlled using a light sensor, that is, one of the input devices.
The light sensor generates an event message when the luminance of a lit space and a set parameter change, and sends the event message to an application controller. The application controller may analyze the event message and control the lighting.
However, a scheme for detecting whether or not the light sensor has generated an event and a scheme for setting the parameters of the light sensor are insufficient.
If the lighting is controlled based on absolute luminance (Lux) measured by the light sensor, a problem arises in that the absolute luminance may be differently measured depending on the location where the light sensor is installed, the type of light sensor, and the reflection coefficient of a lit space. Furthermore, if a lit space and the location where the light sensor is installed change, it is necessary to change the operating setpoint of the light sensor. There is no provision for a scheme for controlling and setting the operating setpoint using the DALI protocol.